A lot of the material that I present on these web pages comes from reading various email discussion groups. I normally try to put in a plug for the groups when I can, but I realized that I should also give credit to the individuals who regularly contribute to these groups. I don’t want to publish full names because some of these people may value their privacy (they are willing to share their thoughts on a limited forum, but may not want to have their names bandied about in a different forum). On the other hand, I do want to give credit where credit is due, and some of these people do deserve a pat on the back.
I could ask everyone before I mention their names, but this is impractical. I thought a nice compromise would be to include the initials for these people. If you are a regular participant in IRBForum, for example, you would know who HM is, but it would not be violating his privacy to use his initials on these web pages. So I might write something like “A regular correspondent on the Evidence-Based Health email discussion group (BD) mentioned an interesting study about...”
I hope that is a reasonable compromise.